The dangers of climate change pose a threat to all of humankind and to ecosystems all over the world. Does this mean that all humans need to equally shoulder the responsibility of mitigating climate change and its effects? The concept of CBDR (common but differentiated responsibilities) is routinely discussed at international negotiations about climate change mitigation. The underlying principle of CBDR in the context of climate change is that highly developed countries have historically contributed far more to climate change and therefore have a greater responsibility to reduce their carbon footprint than less developed countries. The per capita rate of vehicles in the United States is approximately 90 cars per 100 people, whereas the rate in India is 5 cars per 100 people. The total per capita carbon footprint includes a plethora of factors such as carbon emissions derived from industry, air travel and electricity consumption of individual households. As of 2015, the per capita carbon footprint in the United States is ten times higher than that of India, but the discrepancy in the historical per capita carbon footprint is even much greater.

CBDR recognizes that while mitigating carbon emissions in the future is a shared responsibility for all countries, highly developed countries which have contributed substantially to global carbon emissions and climate change for more than a century have a greater responsibility to rein in carbon emissions going forward than less developed countries. However, the idea of “differentiated” responsibilities has emerged as a rather contentious issue. Some representatives of developed countries do not embrace the idea of asking their populations to steeply curb the usage of carbon fuels and achieve strict carbon emission goals, whereas people living in less developed countries face fewer restrictions merely because they are “late developers”. On the other hand, representatives of less developed countries may reject universal standards on carbon emissions which ignore their historical carbon frugality and instead perceive these standards as attempts to curtail their industrial and economic development.

Are citizens of industrialized countries willing to recognize their privileged status and thus contribute more towards climate change mitigation? A team of researchers lead by Reuben Kline at Stony Brook University recently designed a behavioral study published in the journalNature Human Behavior with volunteer college students from the United States and China to address this question. The students participated in a version of an “economic game” to ascertain how economic advantage would affect their choices. The study consisted of two phases. In the initial “Economic Development Game”, participants were divided into groups of six players and each participant could remove either $0, $1, $2, $3 or $4 per round from a shared pool of money ($180) belonging to the group. There were a total of 10 rounds so the maximum one individual could extract during the 10 rounds was $40. The clever twist in the experimental design was that half the participants were not allowed to extract any money during the first five rounds, so that the total they could have extracted was only $20. The second group thus emulated “late developers” in terms of industrialization and economic growth which merely watched as “early developers” accumulated wealth during the first five rounds.

The second phase of the experiment consisted of the “Climate Game” in which all the participants of a group were asked to return money into the common pool (“climate account”). The amount of money that had to be replenished in each group was 53% of what the group had removed from the common pool of $180 during the “Economic Development Game”. For example, if the combined sum of money removed by all six players in a group, was $100, than the group as a whole had to return $53 during the “Climate Game”. If the group did not meet the 53% target, the group risked a “climate catastrophe” in which all players of a group would lose their earnings. The probability of a catastrophic loss depended on the amount of money extracted during the “Economic Development Game”. If, for example, players in a group depleted $150 during Phase 1 and did not meet the threshold of returning $80 (53% of $150) during Phase 2, there was a 92% chance of a “climate catastrophe” in which all players of a group would lose all earnings. This discouraged greed by individual players and instead encouraged judicious extraction of funds during Phase 1 as well as active replenishment during Phase 2 to meet the 53% target.

The fundamental goal of the study was to understand how “early developers” would act because they had additional time to accumulate wealth during the first five rounds of Phase 1 and whether this advantage would affect their willingness to donate funds into the climate account during Phase 2. The results were quite remarkable and give reasons for hope in regards to how recognizing advantage affects social behavior. “Early developers” initially accumulated funds but then chose to extract less money during the later rounds once the “late developers” entered the game. Furthermore, early developers who had accumulated more funds were also more willing to donate money in order to replenish the “climate account” and help stave off the “climate catastrophe”.

Importantly, these experiments were performed in the United States and China, with similar results in both student populations. Interestingly, a representative quote by a “late developer” participant also explains why “late developers” had lower rates of donations in Phase 2: “I decided not to contribute any because I felt that the individuals who were able to [appropriate] more money in the first round (early developers) should contribute more because I started with a disadvantage.”

The researchers interpret their data in the context of climate change mitigation behavior and suggest that recognizing one’s privileged status does indeed motivate individuals to greater sacrifice for the common good. The strengths of the study are the elegant design of the two-phase study, the replication of findings in two different countries as well as the inclusion of control groups in which all players were given equal opportunity to extract funds (without subdividing groups into “early” and “late developers”). Reuben Kline and his colleagues recognize the limitations of a highly stylized economic game experiment in a laboratory experiment using young educated college students to infer real world acceptance of carbon frugality by broader groups of citizens and political leaders in developed countries.

However, there is one fundamental issue which is not addressed in the context of this study. The “early” and “late developers” represented highly developed and less developed countries. However, the two countries they chose – United States and China – are marred by a tremendous amount of socio-economic inequality. Fifteen percent of Americans live in poverty even though the United States are often touted as the wealthiest country in the world. CBDR and the results of the experiment detailed above are predicated on the idea that members of highly developed groups recognize themselves as being advantaged. But if there is such a discrepancy between rich and poor in a highly developed country, how likely is it that socio-economically disadvantaged members of society in a highly developed country will accept their status being labeled as advantaged? Populist political leaders in developed countries appeal to voters who are struggling to pay their bills, and their voters often perceive themselves as marginalized victims. Their income and quality of life may be far higher than that of their counterparts in less developed countries, but it is not clear that they would recognize this as an advantage in the same sense that the “early developer” college students recognized it in the experiment.

The research study by Kline and colleagues indeed provides reason for hope when it comes to climate mitigation behavior as well as perhaps other forms of prosocial behavior. It suggests that recognizing privilege can motivate greater sacrifice for the greater good. However, future studies may need to include a more complex experimental design in which the heterogeneity of “early developers” is addressed and we can derive more insights about how individuals recognize their advantage and privilege.

What is the externalization society? According to Lessenich, this expression describes how developed countries such as the United States, Japan and Germany transfer or externalize risks and burdens to developing countries in South America, Africa and Asia. The Bento Rodrigues disaster is an example of the environmental risk that is externalized. Extracting metals that are predominantly used by technology-hungry consumers in developed countries invariably generates toxic waste which poses a great risk for the indigenous population of many developing countries. The externalized environmental risks are not limited to those associated with mining raw materials. The developed world is also increasingly exporting its trash into the third world.

The US, for example, are the world’s largest exporter of paper trash, exporting scrap paper worth US$ 3.1 billion each year. The US is also the largest producer of electronic waste (E-Waste), estimated at more than 7 million tons of E-Waste per year (PDF). Every new smartphone or tablet release generates mountains of E-Waste as consumers discard their older devices. Re-cycling the older devices sounds like a reasonable solution bu true recycling and re-using of electronic components is quite costly and time-consuming. It is also often not clear which electronic components of devices actually get recycled. To track the fate of discarded electronic devices, Jim Puckett from the Basel Action Network and his colleagues placed GPS-trackers in old electronics dropped off at US-based recycling centers. They found that a third of the “recycled” electronics were shipped overseas to countries such as Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand and Kenya. Puckett used the GPS signal to identify the sites where the E-Waste ended up and visited such a location in Hong Kong, where he found that the “recycled” electronics were being dismantled in junkyards by migrant workers from mainland China who were not wearing any protective clothing that would have protected them from hazardous materials released during the extraction of salvageable E-Waste materials. There are many regulations that restrict the trading of E-Waste but the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that up to 90% of the world’s E-Waste is traded or dumped illegally. This means that even though dropping off old devices at a recycling center may alleviate the conscience of consumers, a significant number of these will not be re-used but instead shipped off to junkyards in other countries – without appropriate monitoring of how these electronic waste products will affect the local environment and health of the population.

Exporting environmental risks to developing countries by either outsourcing high-risk extraction of raw materials or simply dumping waste is just one example of externalization according the Lessenich. Externalizing occupational health risks and poverty by severely under-paying workers are other examples. Bangladesh has now emerged as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of clothing because of its cheap labor. In 2011, the typical monthly wage of a garment industry worker in Bangladesh was estimated at $91 per month – roughly one and a half dollars per day! In addition to this dismally low pay, garment factory workers in Bangladesh also face terrible occupational risks. The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in 2013 which called over 1,100 people and injured more than 2,500 people is just one example of the occupational risks faced by the workers.

Lessenich’s concept of the externalization society isn’t just another critique of the global inequality that we so often hear about. The fundamental principle of the externalization society put forth by Lessenich is the interdependence between the “imperial lifestyle” of wealth and comfort in the developed world and the “wretched lifestyle” of poverty and hardship in the developing world. If those of us who live in the developed world want the convenience of upgrading our smartphones every few years or buying cheap cotton t-shirts, then we need those who manufacture these products in the developing world to be paid lousy wages. If those workers were paid humane wages and their employers instituted appropriate occupational safety measures, as well as health and disability insurance plans that are routine in most parts of the developed world, then the cost of the products would be incompatible with our current economy and lifestyle which are fueled by consumerism and the capitalist imperative of incessant growth.

The pillars of the externalization society are indifference and ignorance. We are indifferent because we see the differential in lifestyle as a Selbstverständlichkeit – a German word for obviousness or taken-for-grantedness. They were born in developing countries, so of course they have to struggle – tough luck, they ended up with the wrong lottery tickets. This Selbstverständlichkeit also extends to the limited mobility of the people born in the developing world. They lack the birthright of the developing world citizens whose passports allow them to either travel visa-free or obtain a visa to nearly any country in the world with minimal effort. This veneer of Selbstverständlichkeit is easiest to maintain if “they” and “their” problems are invisible and thus allow us to ignore the interdependence between our good fortune and their misery. We might see images of the toxic flood in Brazil but few, if any, members of the externalization society will link the mining of cheap iron in Brazil to the utensils they use in their everyday life.

A decade ago, disposable single-use coffee pods such as the Keurig K-cups or the Nespresso pods were extremely rare but by 2014, K-cup manufactures sold a mind-boggling 9 billion K-cups! A new need for disposable products that had previously been met by standard coffee machines arose without considering the environmental and global impact of this need. In theory, the K-cups are recyclable but this would require careful separating of the paper, plastic and the aluminum top. It is not clear how many K-cups are properly recycled, and the E-Waste example shows that even if items are transported to recycling centers, that does not necessarily mean that they will be successfully recycled. Prior to the advent coffee pods, our coffee demands had been easily met without generating additional mountains of disposable plastic and aluminum coffee pod trash. Out of nowhere, there arose a new need for aluminum which again is extracted from the aluminum ore bauxite – another process that generates toxic waste. Instead of feeling a sense of absolution when we drop a disposable item into a recycling bin, we should simply curtail unnecessary consumption of products in disposable containers.

How do we overcome the externalization society? We can make concerted efforts through advocacy, education and regulations that restrict exporting environmental waste, improve health and safety conditions for workers in the developing world and try to restrict our consumerist excesses by clarifying the interdependence between wealth in the externalization society and the poverty in the developing world as well as the moral imperative to abrogate the inequality and asymmetry. Numerous advocates have already attempted this approach for the past decades with limited success. Maybe instead of appealing to the ethics of interdependence, a more effective approach may be to educate each other about the consequences of the interdependence. When millions of refugees show up at the doorstep of the externalization society, “they” are no longer invisible. One can blame wars, religious extremism and political ideologies for the misery of the refugees but it becomes harder to ignore the extent and central role of the underlying inequality. Creating humane working and living conditions for people in the developing world is perhaps the most effective way to stop the so-called “refugee crisis“.

Global climate change is another threat to the externalization society, a threat of its own making. Transferring carbon footprints and pollution to other countries does not change the fact that the whole planet is suffering from the consequences of climate change. Political leaders of the externalization society often demand the closing of borders, erecting walls and expanding their armed forces so they are less likely to have to confront the victims of their externalization but no army or wall is strong enough to lower the rising water levels or stabilize the climate. The externalization society will end not because of a crisis of conscience but because its excesses are undermining its own existence.

In the summer of 2010, over 20 million people were affected by the summer floods in Pakistan. Millions lost access to shelter and clean water, and became dependent on aid in the form of food, drinking water, tents, clothes and medical supplies in order to survive this humanitarian disaster. It is estimated that at least $1.5 billion to $2 billion were provided as aid by governments, NGOs, charity organizations and private individuals from all around the world, and helped contain the devastating impact on the people of Pakistan. These floods crippled a flailing country that continues to grapple with problems of widespread corruption, illiteracy and poverty.

In the summer of 2010, giant floods devastated parts of Pakistan, affecting more than 20 million people. The flooding started on 22 July in the province of Balochistan, next reaching Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and then flowing down to Punjab, the Pakistan ‘breadbasket’. The floods eventually reached Sindh, where planned evacuations by the government of Pakistan saved millions of people.

However, severe damage to habitat and infrastructure could not be avoided and, by 14 August, the World Bank estimated that crops worth US$ 1 billion had been destroyed, threatening to halve the country’s growth (Batty and Shah, 2010). The floods submerged some 7 million hectares (17 million acres) of Pakistan’s most fertile croplands – in a country where farming is key to the economy. The waters also killed more than 200,000 head of livestock and swept away large quantities of stored commodities that usually fed millions of people throughout the year.

The 2010 floods were among the worst that Pakistan has experienced in recent decades. Sadly, the country is prone to recurrent flooding which means that in any given year, Pakistani farmers hope and pray that the floods will not be as bad as those in 2010. It would be natural to assume that recurring flood disasters force Pakistani farmers to give up farming and migrate to the cities in order to make ends meet. But a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change by Valerie Mueller at the International Food Policy Research Institute has identified the actual driver of migration among rural Pakistanis: Heat.

Mueller and colleagues analyzed the migration and weather patterns in rural Pakistan from 1991-2012 and found that flooding had a modest to insignificant effect on migration whereas extreme heat was clearly associated with migration. The researchers found that bouts of heat wiped out a third of the income derived through farming! In Pakistan, the average monthly rural household income is 20,000 rupees (roughly $200), which is barely enough to feed a typical household consisting of 6 or 7 people. It is no wonder that when heat stress reduces crop yields and this low income drops by one third, farming becomes untenable and rural Pakistanis are forced to migrate and find alternate means to feed their family. Mueller and colleagues also identified the group that was most likely to migrate: rural farmers who did not own the land they were farming. Not owning the land makes them more mobile, but compared to the land-owners, these farmers are far more vulnerable in terms of economic stability and food security when a heat wave hits. Migration may be the last resort for their continued survival.

It is predicted that the frequency and intensity of heat waves will increase during the next century. Research studies have determined that global warming is the major cause of heat waves, and an important recent study by Diego Miralles and colleagues published in Nature Geoscience has identified a key mechanism which leads to the formation of “mega heat waves”. Dry soil and higher temperatures work as part of a vicious cycle, reinforcing each other. The researchers found that drying soil is a critical component.. During daytime, high temperatures dry out the soil. The dry soil traps the heat, thus creating layers of high temperatures even at night, when there is no sunlight. On the subsequent day, the new heat generated by sunlight is added on to the “trapped heat” by the dry soil, which creates an escalating feedback loop with progressively drying soil that becomes devastatingly effective at trapping heat. The result is a massive heat-wave which can wipe out crops, lead to water scarcity and also causes thousands of deaths.

The study by Mueller and colleagues provides important information on how climate change is having real-world effects on humans today. Climate change is a global problem, affecting humans all around the world, but its most severe and immediate impact will likely be borne by people in the developing world who are most vulnerable in terms of their food security. There is an obvious need to limit carbon emissions and thus curtail the progression of climate change. This necessary long-term approach to climate change has to be complemented by more immediate measures that help people cope with the detrimental effects of climate change by, for example, exploring ways to grow crops that are more heat resilient, and ensuring the food security of those who are acutely threatened by climate change.

As Mueller and colleagues point out, the floods in Pakistan have attracted significant international relief efforts whereas increasing temperatures and heat stress are not commonly perceived as existential threats, even though they can be just as devastating. Gradual increases in temperatures and heat waves are more insidious and less likely to be perceived as threats, whereas powerful images of floods destroying homes and personal narratives of flood survivors clearly identify floods as humanitarian disasters. The impacts of heat stress and climate change, on the other hand, are not so easily conveyed. Climate change is a complex scientific issue, relying on mathematical models and intrinsic uncertainties associated with these models. As climate change progresses, weather patterns will become even more erratic, thus making it even more challenging to offer specific predictions.

Climate change research and the translation of this research into pragmatic precautionary measures also face an uphill battle because of the powerful influence of the climate change denial lobby. Climate change deniers take advantage of the scientific complexity of climate change, and attempt to paralyze humankind in terms of climate change action by exaggerating the scientific uncertainties. In fact, there is a clear scientific consensus among climate scientists that human-caused climate change is very real and is already destroying lives and ecosystems around the world.

Helping farmers adapt to climate change will require more than financial aid. It is important to communicate the impact of climate change and offer specific advice for how farmers may have to change their traditional agricultural practices. A recent commentary in Nature by Tom Macmillan and Tim Benton highlighted the importance of engaging farmers in agricultural and climate change research. Macmillan and Benton pointed out that at least 10 million farmers have taken part in farmer field schools across Asia, Africa and Latin America since 1989 which have helped them gain knowledge and accordingly adapt their practices.

Pakistan will hopefully soon engage in a much-needed land reform in order to solve the social injustice and food insecurity that plagues the country. Five percent of large landholders in Pakistan own 64% of the total farmland, whereas 65% small farmers own only 15% of the land. About 67% of rural households own no land. Women own only 3% of the land despite sharing in 70% of agricultural activities! The land reform will be just a first step in rectifying social injustice in Pakistan. Involving Pakistani farmers – men and women alike – in research and education about innovative agricultural practices in the face of climate change will help ensure their long-term survival.

I came across an interesting study about the consensus in the scientific community on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), i.e. the idea that human activity is very likely causing most of global warming. What makes this study so interesting is the fact that it involved a “citizen science” approach. Volunteers who contributed to the Skeptical Science website were asked to grade the abstracts of 11,944 scientific papers on global climate change that were published in the years 1991-2011. These volunteers assessed whether the abstracts explicitly or implicitly endorsed AGW, were neutral on this question or whether they explicitly or implicitly rejected the idea that human activity is the main cause of global warming.

The study entitled “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature” was published by John Cook and colleagues as an open access paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The results are no surprise to anyone who has been following the scientific literature on AGW. Of the abstracts that expressed an opinion on AGW, 97.1% explicitly or implicitly stated that humans were the primary cause of global warming. This high level of consensus on the primary human role in causing global warming is very consistent with prior publications in the field. When Cook and colleagues contacted the authors of the papers to obtain their own opinion on the matter, they found that 98% of the authors who had a clear position on climate change agreed on human activity being the major cause of global warming.

Even though I think that the conclusions of the study are correct and that there is indeed a 97-98% consensus among scientists on AGW, I feel that the study highlights the potential for bias in “citizen science”.

The idea of using “citizens”, i.e. volunteers who are not necessarily trained as scientists to help obtain data is very intriguing. However, I do not believe that the authors of the study adequately addressed the issue of potential bias among these volunteers. The paper mentions that they contributed to the website Skeptical Science, which is managed by John Cook and attempts to convert climate change skeptics, i.e. people who deny the primary role of humans in global warming. I suspect that the volunteers who contribute to the website are probably all strongly convinced that AGW is very real. This could introduce a bias in the grading of the abstracts by these volunteers. I could not find any part of the paper, which discussed this potential bias and whether the authors also considered using “citizens” as abstract evaluators who did not believe in AGW or volunteers who felt neutral about AGW. Such “citizens” would have been good control groups to test whether a pre-existing opinion among volunteers can bias their interpretation of the scientific literature.

These concerns about potential “citizen science” bias should not only be addressed in the context of global warming research, but also in other areas of science that are associated with controversy and strongly held beliefs. A “citizen science” assessment of the risks and benefits of gene therapy or of embryonic stem cells in the scientific literature might also be influenced by their beliefs. As excited as many of us are about “citizen science”, it is necessary for us to consider potential biases that “citizens” can introduce, just like we also take into account the biases of professional scientists who conduct experiments when we evaluate a scientific paper.

Image credit: Annual average global warming by the year 2060 simulated and plotted via NASA)